Silent Night
by freyinthelake
Summary: Admonishing a lost druid boy really isn't going to make difference, but maybe Freya wants to know that one of her race really didn't turn on her after all. (WARNING: character death)


This dabble idea was given to me by faithfultomorgana { } because Hannah loves to torture me. Also, for those who may be wondering, I'm a tumblr rp-er and that's why most of my writing so far has been in drabble form. :P Neither Silent Night nor the words of Lisa Hannigan belong to me.

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Silent night, bro ke n night  
All i when you take your flight  
I found some **hate** for you  
Just for show  
You found some love for me  
Thinking I'd go  
Don't keep me from crying to sleep  
_Sleep_ in heavenly peace

Whenever a goal has been reached, whenever battle has been won – or even lost – there is always some kind of hole left behind. Both sides always gain losses, and there's always too few bandages to go around. Time never heals every wound, and sometimes it just makes them worse. And right now, Freya was fully convinced that life was, in its entirety, not fair.

_Camlann._

He didn't know it, but he'd turned against her. Her own race, again. It shouldn't have surprised her at all, but the flimsy hope that always roosts in the human heart held on to the idea that not all of them would turn. Yet it was Mordred. The little boy who'd sprouted from fear. She had too, at one time. All was looking over shoulders and hiding behind trees and deadly explosions of power. Somehow they were a bit similar - but so, so very different.

Their deaths were different, for one thing.

Hers was quiet. No less painful, but quiet. His was in the final flashes of battle, the dark before the calm. He fell and she hurt. Watching everything through the filmy mirage that was her water mirror, she could see everything, hear everything, smell everything. Emrys came and went, even as an old man drawing from deeply buried reserves of strength to carry his king as Freya wept. Merlin was so close, and so far. That was the closest she would ever come to him again and she knew it. But it was the way things had to be.

When the field of bloodshed was quiet once more, the mirror allowed it's watcher to step through the void. Mordred wasn't dead yet; close, but not yet. Freya heaved him into a standing position before dragging him back through the cool doorway in the air.

Silent night, moonlesslit night  
_Nothing's_ changed  
Nothing is _right_  
I should be **strong**er than weeping alone  
**You** should be weaker than sending me home  
I can't stop you fighting to sleep  
Sleep in heavenly peace

The puzzlement upon finding himself on his knees on very different ground than Camlann was written clearly across the druid boy's face. Yet he was not a boy anymore. He was a twisted, confused, grief riddled man, unsure of what he was and his true role in the world. His many goals and purposes had all twisted like rope into one thing; and he'd thought it was all over. The longing for the peace of death was communicated in an almost disappointed glance at the ground.

Freya stood, ankle deep in her lake, and looked at him.

"I was close to freedom. Why am I dragged here away from it?" His dry grumble nearly brought a wry smile to the water guardian's face, but she bit it back.

"I need a word with you." He tilted his head up a degree or two further, but still did not meet her eyes.

"Why, Mordred? Why choose such an end? One that would leave you hungry for death? Is that what you wanted out of your life?" The tears were beginning to pool just below her rim of vision. Her vocal desperation was lost to the air as she pleaded, far too late, for him to change his opinions.

"Because I wanted change!" His statement began firmly enough but ended in almost a roar.

"You yourself were killed for the same reason as I! How can you still forgive Arthur, forgive Emrys? Oh yes, Freya, I've heard your story by now. It has become a legend. A sad _love_ story" - he spit the word out with such poisonous vehemence that Freya wondered how he'd loved at all - "that superstitious travelers tell round their nightly campfires. How, _Lady_, HOW?!"

The pools had diminished in favor of overflowing into waterfalls. Freya took three or four deep, shaky breathes before she could say anything in response.

"Because right now, Merlin is telling his king that he has magic." The watery window was now in her mind's eye. She could see the king's face, the very moment Merlin revealed himself, and despite the myriad of conflicting emotions the king held no fear for his servant. None at all.

"Arthur will be confused, Arthur will be hurt, but he will not be afraid. Because there, standing over him, is the epitome of good, pure magic. Magic itself." The further Freya spoke, the taller she stood. With pride, faith, and all hope for the days to come. Days far in the future and days a week away. She couldn't help it.

Mordred turned his face away from her, hand drifting to his wound then back down again.

"And you," now it was her turn to spit at the druid, "You had no faith in him - in either of them! That decision brought you here, to wanting death. You could have been more, Mordred! _More_!" She was sobbing now. Here was one of her kind, so lost to the taunting and pulling darkness.

_I found some hate for you_  
_Just for show_  
_You found some love for me_  
_Thinking I'd go_

"Freya…you were of my kind once." He smiled bitterly, wistfully. She nodded.

"You have no need to stay with me any longer, if you so wish. I can die in peace, and you can know you tried. Even if it was too late." His head sank a little lower on his shoulders, and her heart swelled with pity and fear and sisterly affections. Odd, seeing as she'd lost her own brother many, many years ago. But apparently such young-bred feelings were never quite erased, forming scars instead.

_I should be stronger than weeping alone_  
_You should be weaker than sending me home_

She would not leave him. He was a fool to ask her to leave. He was wise to ask her to leave as well. Freya should leave him, all alone so he could have what he wished. Yet she was choosing to be selfish, as she had only done a few times in her life. Somewhere inside, she wanted to leave. And something was pulling her forward to the very brink of the water towards her once kin.

"I will stay. Until you - until you are gone."

And so they sat in companionable silence. Harsh words floated away into the past, and Mordred finally closed his eyes for good. Freya didn't cry any more after that.

_I can't stop you fighting to sleep_  
_Sleep in heavenly peace_

_~fin_


End file.
